New West Farmers Market

You are here: Home / Archives for Blog

Farmers Market Challenge Week #14

By

If you were to Pinterest birthday party snacks, you will find reams of posts featuring Rice Krispie squares, cookies, chocolate-covered anything, chips, pretzels, greasy snacks galore. And I get it. Birthdays are all about debauchery.

BUT…

Do they have to be 100 per cent debauched?

Nah.

Last week we celebrated my son’s fifth birthday with a superhero theme. And you know superheroes – Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, even Flash – they all need super fuel.

Word has it, they love their fruits and veggies 😉

cof
rainbow carrots = X-ray vision sticks and  tomatoes = villain resistance shield
apples = energy blast

Our fuel-up station was 100% market fresh. The tomatoes were a mixture from both Greendale Herb and Vine and Ripple Creek Organic Farm. The super vision carrots (extra super because of the rainbowness) were from Zaklan Heritage Farm. And the energizing apple slices were from Harvest Direct Farms.

Super market-fresh fuel was a super success

Yes, we had a super fantastic, super hero cake that a friend made, but we also had our health too. And that made this mama feel superhero fantastic!

cof

This Week’s Loot

Greendale Herb and Vine

  • 1 basket mixed cherry tomatoes $5

Ripple Creek Organic Farm

  • 1 basket sunrise cherry tomatoes $5

Ossome Acres

  • 1 bunch green onions $2
  • 1 bunch collard greens $3
  • Zaklan Heritage Farm:
  • 2 mixed bags of salad greens $9
  • 1 head purple lettuce $2
  • 1 bunch mustard greens $3
  • 1 bunch rainbow carrots $3

Harvest Direct Farms

  • 1 basket apples $5

Fresh Quality Produce

  • 1 bag English snap peas $3

Total spent: $40

How many parents out there were feeling frantic about back to school this week? Or was it just me?

I’ve been making my son’s snacks and lunches for four years, but suddenly now that he’s in kindergarten I felt the game has changed. He needed brain food. He needed energy food. As do I, now that I’m also back at UBC, in the dietetics program, with a super full course load, and three of my days starting at 8 a.m.!!!

Can the Farmer’s Market help?

Right now, we’ve got a lot of fruits and veggies on display. Carrots, tomatoes and snap peas are a no brainer for fresh veggies mid-afternoon. Fresh fruits are always a go-to for both the boy and I. But we’re not always going to have this abundance of freshness. In fact, with the leaves already falling in spots of New West, our days for summer fruits are fast dwindling.

One friend suggested borrowing her dehydrator for quick pick-me-up snacks well into the winter months.

Fermenting carrots, radishes, and onions might also be an option for added flavour and health snacks.

Eggs can be used in healthified baked goods that can be frozen for extended access. They can also be boiled and packed for a hearty snack or lunch.

My plan for next week is to create as many snack foods as possible with my market fare. How about you? What are you doing to amp up lunches and snacks?

 

Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

Farmers Market Challenge Week #13

By

Remember when my child was given the budget a few weeks ago, and remember how he had absolutely no interest in purchasing mustard greens? None. Well folks, last week I was prepared for payback.

Yes, I am that parent 😉

I saw Zaklan Heritage Farm had a full supply of mustard greens, as well as several other greens. Ossome Acres, Ripple Creek, and Nature Village Farms also had a wide variety of salad greens to choose from. Hmmm, I thought. Why not fill the bag full of greens. Not just mustards, but purple and green and spiky lettuces and kales. That’ll show the boy. We’ll have greens every day, and not just in salads, I thought. We’ll cook them, have them as side dishes, combine them into the main courses.

It will be a greens-o-ganza.

SO MANY GREENS

That was the plan.

I loaded up on greens. Nearly half the budget went to greens.

But the thing is, this past week, we had several social engagements; we barely ate at home. As such, those greens sat and sat and sat. Some of them fared quite well (the spiky purple lettuce is a champ for durability) but others like the arugula and kale wilted and became limp by Monday.

What to do? What to do?

Heyyyy, wait a second.

About a month ago, the market featured Love Food Hate Waste, an organization with the sole purpose of reducing food waste in Metro Vancouver. I remember grabbing a few recipe cards, and after rifling through a stack of papers, I found the one I wanted:

Fridge Harvest Stew.

Fridge Harvest Stew recipe card – www.lovefoodhatewaste.ca
Fridge Harvest Stew recipe card – www.lovefoodhatewaste.ca

Although I didn’t follow this recipe to a tee, I did use up all the wilted greens, as well as leftover chicken that had been in the fridge for several days, shrivelling tomatoes, a wrinkling zucchini, an onion that I purchased two weeks ago, and aged sweet peppers. I didn’t have cannelloni beans, but did have chickpeas and black beans.

Based on the size of the pot, I figure I’ve got at least five freezable lunches in there.

Chicken Harvest Stew

I loved the concept of this meal. It helped clean out my fridge of foods that likely would have been composted otherwise. I do not eat raw tomatoes or peppers once they start wrinkling, nor wilted greens. But when cooked, none of that matters. It’s no longer a texture issue, it’s just pure taste.

According to Love Food Hate Waste, a 2014 study showed that in Metro Vancouver we are wasting over 100,000 tonnes of avoidable food a year – things that could still be eaten with a little creativity. Broken down further, that’s the equivalent of 16,000 heads of lettuce, 40,000 tomatoes, 80,000 potatoes, 32,000 loaves of bread, 55,000 apples, 70,000 cups of milk, and 30,000 eggs – In. A. Day.

That’s huge.

And it’s costing households approximately $700 a year.

I don’t have that kind of money to spare.

It annoys me to no end when I have to toss aged foods from my crisper and fridge shelves.

This recipe, and hopefully others on lovefoodhatewaste.ca, has helped breathed new creativity in using up those so-called wasted foods.

Market Loot

Zaklan Heritage Farms

  • mini head of lettuce $1
  • 1 head spiky purple salanova $2.50
  • 1 bunch mizuna mustard greens $3
  • 1 bunch radishes $2.50

Ripple Creek Farms

  • 1 bag arugula $4
  • 2 pounds German butter potatoes $4.50
  • 2 tri-coloured peppers $1.75

Ossome Acres

  • 1 bunch ursula kale $3
  • 1 garlic $1.20

Mandair Farms

  • 1 bunch fall-coloured dahlias $5

Harvest Direct Farms

  • 1 basket plums $5
  • 1 basket sunrise apples $5

Fresh Quality Produce

  • 1 large bag English snap peas $1.55

Total spent: $40

Salad with plums, radishes, and peppers

There are a couple things to note here.

The English snap peas were my son’s choice. After giving him full reign a few weeks ago, he’s taken a keen interest in the shopping side of things at the market. It’s no longer just about running the bridges and getting his face painted, he wants to be able to choose at least one item of the shop. This week it was the snap peas – he LOVES snap peas!

Also noteworthy, the apples.

For one of our dinner excursions, I was charged with making dessert. With a basket of in-season apples, there was only one thing to make: Apfelkuchen!

GERMAN APPLE CAKE (get the recipe here)

Yum. Yum.

Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

Kids and Food

By

Why a Post About Kids and Food?

My kid is a champ about food and I recognize that at least some luck is responsible for that. He wasn’t always that way, and I can remember having to try a lot of tricks to creatively get him into food and eating.

My personal philosophy says that food makes life wonderful. It is often the social lubricant needed to get friends together; it is often a good reason to have something to do with your hands or pass time. It opens conversational doors and it levels playing fields. You do not need to be a chef to make food a central part of a social relationship – a bit of bread and some squashed tomatoes can go very, very far.

Mouthful of sushi with his favourite fillings.

As a society we struggle with time poverty and economic hardships that make cooking the healthiest food possible hard, and we often choose convenience over quality. The fact is, though, that we need good food for energy to live our lives as fully as possible, and great-for-you food is rarely the most convenient food. I believe it is my job as a parent to instill great food habits in my kid and the younger those habits are formed, the easier my job is.

I’ve hesitated to write this post. I don’t wish to suggest I have all the answers. I have no special training in nutrition or in child psychology that makes me extra qualified. I’m a parent of a pretty cool nine year old and I’ve tried *a lot* of strategies. For years, I have subscribed to the Michael Pollan’s simplistic manifesto: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”  and still do today. (For a review of one of his books I wrote back in 2011, head here.) What I’m sharing is not a definite how-to recipe, but rather a pantry for you to pull ideas from.

I avoid using words like “picky” and “diet” when I talk about kids and food to friends because they’re such loaded terms.

Set Up Expectations – Yours, and Theirs

What’s the thing that annoys you the most? Is it leaving the table before the meal is done? Is it refusing to eat anything green? Is it complaining and bargaining? Determine what it is that is your hot-button-issue can help set up the plan to address it. Not every parent experiences dysfunction at the dinner table the same way. So take some time to figure out what bugs you and plan how to address it.

When food refusal and stalling at the table became enough of an issue that I felt my blood pressure rising with each meal, I decided to implement some rules.

What follows are some basic rules I can more or less adapt and add to as needed to any kid, to any hot-button-issue. If needed and if your child is reading already, write up these rules and post them in the kitchen to point to later. A very important strategy is to explain these rules when they aren’t hungry and it’s not a mealtime. Try and find a time when they’re snugglier and calm and use language that gives them ownership and pride, such as “Now that you are 4, I think you are old enough to have an important talk with me and I trust you to listen.”

Picking tomatoes from the farm. “Two for the basket, one for my mouth.”

If your child is school age, they likely have been introduced to the idea of healthy eating already. Approach the topic about how it works in your home by bringing up what they’ve learned in school. Younger children are little scientists and are thirsty for knowledge – fill up their cups! If you need some resources, here are some of the better ones I’ve found:

  • Spoonfed – deals mostly in making sure kids eat healthy and avoid processed and synthetic stuff. Her blog is great on its own, and she has a great page of resources too.
  • Raise Healthy Eaters – another food blog, this one by a food educator and dietician Maryann Jacobsen. She’s a little bit more “preventing picky eaters” than Spoonfed, but her blog has tonnes of incredible resources. She has an e-book out that is really good and co-authored a book in print.
  • The Picky Eater Project is a series from the New York Times and chronicles one family’s attempt at overcoming picky eating. Start at Step One and work to the most recent.
  • 100 Days of Real Food is another good blog, specifically this post which talks about the difference between a picky eater and a problem feeder.

Rules for You

Even as adults we need to have some rules especially if it is stuff we’re struggling with. So here are your rules:

  1. Do not waver from the rules. I cannot stress this enough. Unless your child or you are sick or you are travelling and can’t otherwise manage to, stick to the rules. At the beginning this could mean hardship: crying, whining, bargaining. But stick to them. Wavering is often what gets you into the mess you feel you are in. If it is time for a rule change, that’s okay too, but do not negotiate for “bites”.
  2. Talk about food and food decisions in a way that makes you feel like you are doing the play-by-play. Instead of having these conversations in your head “Jeez, it’s 5, I only have thirty minutes to make a meal and eat, what should I feed these kids” verbalize these conversations and involve your children. Planning and learning about food are essential to becoming good eaters.
  3. Always approach the challenge from their perspective. I did cut up all the food for my son for a long time, though I asked him to use utensils to eat. He would give me the excuse that he wasn’t hungry and then an hour later beg for food, but I realized that it was such a struggle to cut up his food that he was claiming hunger when really it was a lack of dexterity with utensils. Utensils can be mastered after the habits exist.
  4. One thing at a time. This is some general parenting advice I was given and follow even now, but you cannot fix everything all at once. Pick the thing that bugs you the most and work to fix it.
  5. Accept there are foods they actually do not like. This may change but it’s okay to have preferences.

Rules for Them

Parents control the What, When and Where. Kids control How Much and Whether.

This is straight from Ellyn Satter’s super helpful “Division of Responsibility in Feeding” which I’ve read is referred to as “the gold standard in feeding”. The Ellyn Satter Institute’s mission is helping children and adults be joyful and competent with eating. I love this mission because there is So. Much. Joy in food. It is my job to pick when and where we eat, and to offer a variety of foods to choose from, including at least one sure bet I know my son will eat. It is his job to decide how much (start small and have seconds!) and whether he eats what I offer. Note, I do not offer an alternative. Eat what is presented to you, in whatever ratio, or go hungry. We do have snack times, but we also have rules about snacks-in-lieu-of-meals.

Try a taste, you’ll be surprised.

This stuffed pasta looks pretty meh, but tastes wonderful. You have to try it to know that for sure!

This thing is hella ugly and even has all sorts of weird crunchy bits but YUM.

As an addendum to the Division of Responsibility, above, I ask that he at least try a taste of everything on the night’s menu. Nothing was more satisfying than him once trying passion fruit and being delighted that he actually loved it, despite its ugly appearance. It was very convincing for him to learn that sometimes food that doesn’t look good actually is good, and that a taste (and a taste next time and a taste next time and a taste the time after that) was important for opening your mind. All foods need at least a taste, and he can choose not to eat something after he’s had a taste.

Your parent is not a short order cook.

While I will often slightly modify the family meal by not putting his veggies in the curry sauce, not pouring the sauce on the rice before serving it, or by not cooking his mushrooms in the mushroom sauce and adding his in raw, etc, I am not a short order cook. I will not cook multiple meals for the family unless it is a special reason, such as the night I made scallops with asparagus (both confirmed dislikes on my son’s part after multiple tries) for my husband’s’ birthday. My son knows this, and sometimes greets the meal with less enthusiasm than at other times. But he always understands that whatever is before him that night is the dinner for tonight, because…

You can’t always eat your favourite foods.

Every night cannot be cheesy noodle night, despite cheesy noodles being delicious. We regularly repeat: “You can’t have your favourites every night, but we promise to offer you tasty food that is good for you every night.” Favourite foods should be saved for special days and my son has learned that some of the foods he was suspicious of initially have become a favourite.

Involvement equals ownership.

A child being involved can make a world of difference in thinking that they have influence and control over the food they eat. My son gets to choose at least two nights’ meals when we do our weekly meal plan. He originally always picked pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, or cheesy noodles, but now he has expanded and includes all sorts of pastas, sausages, quiche, and others. We also try to eat from a regular rotation of sure bets plus a few experiments to continually try new stuff, including new to the adults!

He also gets to help cook whenever he wants, and we always downplay meat as the primary protein. We also make sure he gets the chance to meet farmers and food producers, either at the farmers market or at the farm. It is critical he understand that the meats (especially) we eat come from animals killed for us to consume. When and if he starts suggesting this is uncool to his little personal set of ethics, we will talk about vegetarian and veganism, which he has already been exposed to in a healthy way.

No phones / books / devices at the dinner table.

We’re a bit flexible about this for weekend brunches when we all like to look at magazines, read books, catch up on Twitter, and share with one another, but for dinner there are no distractions allowed at the table. Dinner is about food and family time. We talk about our days, talk about the food, and talk about the future. It is the one and only time we guarantee that we will sit together and speak with no interruptions of busy lives (though there are regularly times when one of us has to eat and run to make it to a meeting!). Focusing on the food rather than the distractions for the main meal of our day is a great way to connect with what we are eating.

Subrule to this one: eat at the same time every day.

Food is good for the soul.

A meal is more than just shovelling food in, and food is good for the body and the soul. Treats are okay now and then, and moderation is always the key. Experimentation keeps it lively, but consistency in how we experiment makes a big deal. By acknowledging that food is part of the fabric of our family, and revering it for more than just fuel, I hope to develop a lifelong interest and healthy love of food in my son.

Picking raspberries to make jam.

Strategies When It Isn’t Working

Sometimes you need a few strategies to just get going or overcome a stumbling block. Here are some ideas:

  • At meal times for a while I presented only one food at a time. For example, all the chicken I wanted him to eat. When he finished that, all the veggies. Or whatever. Sometimes a busy or full plate gets overwhelming and it’s easier to not eat anything or to fib that you aren’t hungry.
  • Every meal included one thing I knew my son would eat, (but when I was presenting one food at a time it was usually the third or last thing I’d offer him).
  • If they get up from the table mid meal, their dinner is over and more importantly, so is play time. I would sometimes be told he was full and off he’d go to play and sure enough 15 minutes later he’d be looking to eat again. Knowing he could come and go as he pleased was disruptive to dinner time, made it drag out for hours unnecessarily, and was frankly, rude to us. It may take a few hungry and bored bellies to get the message through to them, but if they know the food will always be there, they will not focus on it. It takes focus to eat mindfully and that focus comes with training.
  • Include them in meal planning and post the plan. On Sunday ask your child to pick two meals. Even if it’s garbage like hot dogs and macaroni, let them pick it and cook exactly that with no fancy extras. If they balk when it’s presented to them, remind them this was their choice and that that is the meal for today. Refusing it means only one meal to choose the following week. The more they feel in control of food, the better. It helps them respect that you get a turn too, to choose the meal.
  • If they waste time at the table, get out a timer. Give them 30 minutes to eat. We did the timer after we’d had a few battles over it taking an hour or an hour and a half to get through a tiny plate of pasta. So long as the food is going in efficiently and regularly, and they’re not wasting time, no need for a timer. But once it slows down and they’re being stubborn, out comes the timer. When it goes off, it’s the same rules as abandoning the table.
  • Stop killing yourself making fancy meals. There is nothing more disheartening that having someone pronounce something you worked on for an hour as “crappy.” In five years you can go back to the way you like, but right now your kid’s behaviour is offensive to your kitchen skills and it’s distressing. Find a few cookbooks with “30 minute meals” and keep rotating the same five until you feel ready to try another item. This isn’t forever.
  • Lead by example, and show gratitude for the food you are offered. Please, thank you, and complimentary comments are essential. Talk to them about finding good things to say. To this day my son hates beets but he has learned to say things like “I love the colour of these beets” or “they are such a cool shape”. We talk about what we are eating pretty much non-stop, and play guessing games for ingredients and ways we could improve it.
  • Turn it into something that isn’t about food. If your child is into math or science, make meals about math or science. Get a digital scale. Get them to estimate how many peas in a cup. Get them to calculate how many millilitres there are in an fluid ounce. Look up why beets turn your pee pink. Shift the focus from “FOOD AND EATING” and maybe food will go in their mouth when they aren’t looking.
  • Finally: check your expectations about how much they should eat. Are you Italian Grandma-ing them? Read up on what their little bodies need and measure out portions to suit. Chances are pretty good your kid is getting adequate food in a day–the issue here is more behavioural than nutritional.

 

Farmers Market Challenge Week #12

By

When you’re given a $20 pack of chicken tenders, there’s really only one thing to do: build the budget around that chicken.

A few weeks ago, I did a comparison of chicken breasts, comparing Rockweld Farms to that of a supermarket. The results, although not bad, were not resounding. We thought Rockweld’s chicken certainly had more flavour, but was drier than the supermarket’s bird. We acknowledged the dryness was likely an error in our cooking approach given that chain chicken is so often loaded with water and other such fillers, whereas Rockweld’s chicken is more au naturel.

Still, Aaron at Rockweld Farms did not want our taste buds to have that memory.

He called me into his truck. We chatted about his chicken. He told me that he, himself, does a tender check of each bird he cuts to ensure its quality. He said his chicken requires minimal grilling time, just a couple minutes for each side. Comparatively the chicken we get from the grocery store is typically on the grill for 8-9 minutes.

Aaron handed me a pack of his “fail-proof” chicken tenders, a part of the bird, he said, you can’t go wrong with. He would not take payment.

“Tell me what you think after trying these,” he said.

With chicken in hand, I had a plan.

This week was all about fajitas!

Market Loot

Rockweld Farms

  • Package of 11 chicken tenders -$20.60

Zaklan Heritage Farms

  • 1 head spiky purple salanova $2.50
  • 6 long red tomatoes $3.25
  • 1 pound tomatillos $4.35
  • 1 bunch cilantro $2
  • 1 bunch radishes $2.50

Ripple Creek Farms

  • 1 cucumber $1.50
  • 1 bunch (of 2) giant white onions $3.50

Ossome Acres

  • 1 garlic bulb $2

Mandair Farms

  • 1 pint of slightly spicy peppers $3
  • Harvest Direct Farms
  • 1 basket peaches (5) $5

Fresh Quality Produce

  • 4 ears corn $3

Steel and Oak

  • 1 bomber smoked hefeweizen  beer $7

Total spent: $39.60

It was a meal that maybe would have been suited more to Cinco de Mayo than a random Saturday, but then, we wouldn’t have had fresh tomatillos or local corn. And that, just would not do.

These fajitas were bursting with flavour.

My husband made salsa verdé, roasting and chopping the tomatillos, peppers, onion, tomato and garlic , and then combining with cilantro, lime juice and salt. The only non-market ingredients were the lime juice and salt.

I wasn’t expecting the heat that came off the peppers. My eyes weren’t quite watering like they were when I took a bite of the cherry red pepper offered by Jasbir at Mandair Farms, but my taste buds were certainly on alert. (Note: I am somewhat of a wimp when it comes to fiery spice.) And yet, without that added heat, I don’t think the salsa verdé would have been as good. All the ingredients were perfectly complimentary. The flavours, the freshness, the texture, the combination of colours, they were so beautiful, so Mexican.

I saw salad pepper and I thought sweet. Oh man, I couldn’t guzzle the water fast enough! (Jasbir even gave me a few strawberries to temper the fire in my mouth!)

 

Market-fresh salsa ingredients: white onion, garlic, tomatillos, tomato, peppers

 

Market-inspired salsa verdé

Housed in a corn tortilla, we piled in caramelized onion and peppers, strips of chicken tenders, cheese, and the homemade salsa verdé. That combination of market-fresh ingredients, from the tomatillos right down to the chicken, was a taste explosion in my mouth. On the side, we had barbecued corn, and a salad of salanova greens, along with a pint of Steel and Oak smoked hefeweizen.

fajitas and corn

It was light. It was refreshing. It was summer perfect.

Beyond the fajitas, though, how did the chicken fare on its own? Did we cook it properly this time? Or would it again be flavourful, but dry?

Like the breast we purchased weeks ago, the chicken tenders were grilled as well, but at a much more reduced time. The results were significant.

They were tender and moist, and they presented intense flavour. There was no dryness whatsoever. On a bed of salad, they added to the overall taste. They weren’t just an additional, meaty texture. They had substance. I felt my stomach filling faster with less than I usually do with store-bought chicken breasts. They demonstrated, with great panache, that they belonged – on salad, in fajitas, on their own.

My son, who sometimes balks at that amount of chicken we eat, asked for a second helping. With chicken, that rarely happens.

chicken on it’s own

The package had a total of 11 meaty sized tenders, giving us one full meal for three, plus three adult lunches, and a kid’s meal.

At $20, for us, it is still a splurge. Seeing that $20 tag, if I had to pay for it, I would have had to think real hard about whether it was a necessity or a treat. I would have thought of all the other things I could get, and how fuller my bag would be, without the cost of the chicken cutting into my budget.

As a single-income family, we don’t have the luxury to be able to splurge weekly on locally farmed chicken no matter how enjoyable it is. But now knowing Aaron, learning more about his farm and the practices at his farm, seeing his passion for his chicken, and, yes, experiencing that flavour too, it is a splurge I would be interested to indulge in again one day soon.

Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

Farmers Market Challenge Week #11

By

Full disclosure, I went over budget.

I tried not to. I tried to stay within the $40 limit, I really tried, but my hands were tied. Tied by a near five-year-old’s stomach’s desires.

Last week I handed over the $40 market budget to my son.

Brave or ridiculously silly, I’m still not sure.

With market money in hand, this kid is ready to shop.

 

As a future dietitian, I try to instil in my son the knowledge of healthful eating, and the empowerment of knowing where your food comes from, how it was grown, and who grew it. In my view, you are never too young, or too old for that matter, to take up this practice.

My son has picked out vegetables and fruits before, but he’s never been in charge of the whole budget.

I gave him a few guiding principles: I told him we had to try and be more healthful than not; I told him sweets were okay, but they needed to be balanced with fresh fruits, greens, and other such vegetables. I also encouraged him to select a protein as well.

His first purchase of the day: caramel corn.

 

Oh no.

My brain was fraught with fear. Had my guiding principles gone in one ear and out the other? Were we doomed to be going home with a bag full of pastries, popsicles, pies and cookies?

No, we were not.

With caramel corn in one hand, he ran over to Ripple Creek Organic Farm and shouted with glee: tomatoes!!!! He picked a pint of sweet orange cherry tomatoes that I believe are called sunrise; they were super sweet, although my son liked the reds better. He purposely sauntered over to Zaklan Heritage Farm where there was a huge selection of greens, onions, radishes, and other such produce. Yet, his eyes were fixed on tomatoes.

 

Selecting his first pint of tomatoes. Smell is important.

 

Purchasing tomatoes

 

This is what happens when you give your kid the shopping responsibilities: 2 pints of wee tomatoes!!!

He also grabbed a bunch of rainbow carrots (the colours win him over every time), he hemmed and hawed over radishes, but in the end determined they were too spicy, and instead grabbed a mini head of green lettuce because it looked “ninja green!”

Picking out his ninja green lettuce head.

He searched for the ice cream truck, but – thankfully for me and my desires for more produce – Rocky Point ice cream was not on the schedule.

He walked up the steps of Wild Westcoast Seafoods like he owned the truck. With his fingers curled on the surface of the freezer windows he peered inside to see if he could find anything appealing. We love fish in our house and when Ron pulled out a slab of tuna, the boy took one look and exclaimed “yum!”

When my son was mulling over a $20 container of cherries from the Harvest Direct stand, we were given a valuable teaching lesson. I suggested he look at the market money in his hands and count how much money he had left. At that point we had $6.50. Do we have $20, I asked him. No, he said. Do we have $5, I asked him. Yes, he said. I pointed to the containers of apples, plums, peaches and nectarines and told him that was the selection we were limited to. He grabbed the nectarines and was ready to go to the next stop.

Nectarines.

 

We had $1.50 left to spend. I told him the options: we could get 2 zucchinis at Fresh Quality Produce for $1.50, or 2 cucumbers at Ripple Creek for approximately $2, or 2 ears of corn at both Fresh Quality Produce and Mandair Farms for $2, putting us over budget by 50 cents, or a (pretty, pretty, pretty please) head of spiky purple lettuce for $2.50. He flat out said no to the lettuce and the zucchini 🙁

I thought for sure he’d opt for the corn as he LOVES corn, and he almost did. He squeezed in next to the ladies husking the cobs and was about to pounce on the perfect two, when his eyes veered over to the brown box of green beans.

He thought they were peas. I told him they were green beans, which we often have on the barbecue. He looked at the corn, looked at the green beans, walked away from the corn, and grabbed a bag to fill with beans.

Meticulously counting the beans. We got 43 in total.

I’m not sure if he recognized that he would get more by choosing green beans over corn, but it was pretty hilarious watching him fill his bag – meticulously counting every single bean he placed in the bag. At 20 beans, he went over to the scale. We had 77 cents worth. I told him to grab 20 more. Jeff, the vendor, was howling as he watched him count. He went back to the scale. Gilda, who was manning the cash, told him to run back and grab three more. She told him he could leave the bag with her. He gave her an incredulous look. Are you kidding? No way, nope, he was not gonna leave that bag unprotected. He got his three more beans, giving us 43 beans in total, and we were right at $1.50.

Paying for his beans

This kid knows budget!

Market Loot

Gary’s Kettle Corn

  • 1 small bag caramel corn $3.50

Ripple Creek Organic Farm

  • 1 pint sunrise tomatoes $5

Zaklan Heritage Farm

  • 1 mini ninja lettuce $2
  • 1 bunch rainbow carrots $3.50
  • 1 pint rainbow cherry tomatoes $4.50

Wild Westcoast Seafood

  • 1 lb tuna $15

Harvest Direct Farms

  • 1 container nectarines $5

Fresh Quality Produce

  • 43 green beans $1.50

Total spent: $40

Market loot

Now, while my kid had the budget down, I did not. It was a bit hard for me to give up control. I tried. I really, really did. But I could NOT walk away from a farmers’ market without a bunch of mustard greens and purple spiky lettuce in my hands. They might not be there the next week, I told myself. We would have to buy more greens mid week; the mini head would not get us through, I reasoned. I needed more greens.

When the boy wasn’t looking, I scooted under the Zaklan tent and added to the weekly loot.

Over-budget loot

Zaklan Heritage Farms

  • 1 bunch mizuna mustard greens $3
  • 1 head purple spiky lettuce $2.50

Total in the red: $5.50

After the market adventure, our hungry bellies went home for dinner. The first thing the boy asked for was a salad of his own that included his green ninja lettuce, his purple carrots, and a huge handful of his tomatoes.

Kid-size, market-influenced salad

 

Yep, pretty sure that’s a win 🙂

Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

Supported By

Newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

We’re Social

@newwestfarmers #newwestfarmers

Land Acknowledgement

Our market is grateful to operate on the unceded land of the Qayqayt, Kwikwetlem, and other Halkomelem speaking Peoples. We acknowledge that colonialism has made invisible their histories and connections to the land. We acknowledge the incredible gift this land is to our market and BC Agriculture. We commit to the ongoing work of decolonization and allyship.